Resources point of View:
Living with cows means living with nature’s incomes without depleting the natural resources.
Modern civilization is utilizing nature’s capital resources. The resources like petroleum were accumulated by nature over millions of years but we have squandered them in just over 150 years.
The mundane use of external resources like fertilizers (Nitrogen, Potassium and phosphorus) instead of organic cow manure and organic practices is only helping in growing food in quantities but not meeting the required nutritional content.
Have you ever questioned how the our Indian farmers grew enough food for thousands of years and still kept the soil and water resources helthy? How the traditional agriculture survived the test of time?
One important reason was the ability to live in harmony with the laws of nature and the important part of that balancing act was interweaving every aspect of their existence with cows and bulls.
Cow and Soil fertility:
World soil is in danger. Death of soil is the death of civilization. Bad soil is bad for global health.
All over the world, more than seven and a half million acres of soil has been degraded. That is larger than USA and Canada combined. What remains is ailing as a result of compaction, erosion and salination making it near impossible to plant and adding to greenhouse gases and air pollution.
The only solution is to save cows and use more and more cowdung to enrich soil with necessary organic nutrients.
Cow for Water:
If you are wondering what has cow got to do with water? There is much to it.
Unless soil has enough humus(organic content), the soil would not be able to absorb water and pass to the underground water levels. Many reason why we see flood in many places in spite of no major rain is because the solid think soil is not letting the water to pass through it.
Many of the streams that use to follow most of the year in spite of no rain is because of the water that is being dripped down from the terrains which had stored the water and collective droplets forming a small beautiful stream.
I am sure many of you would have seen how the wells and streams have dried up in the last 30 years.
Secondly, cow based natural farming consumes much lesser water. Industrial agriculture has pushed food production to use methods by which the water retention of the soil is reduced and demand for water has increased.
If we could go a little deeper, the advent of Green Revolution pushed the third world agriculture toward wheat and rice production. The new crops demanded more water than millet and consumed three times more water than the indigenous verities of wheat and rice.
This has resulted in dramatic increase in water use has led t the instability of regional water balances.
Beef Consumption:
Many of us reading certainly understand the taboo associated with slaughtering the cows and any violence against animals.
It is important to note that to produce 1kg of meat requires between 5,000 and 20,000 litres of water whereas to produce 1kg of wheat requires between 500 and 3,000 litres of water based on the type of irrigation.
This reminds me of one of the quote of Mahatma Gandhi –‘Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.’
Culture:
Out of the 46 civilizations only one has remained, that is the Hindu civilization which every Indian has to be proud of. We are the only continuing civilization till today.
Culture is not some monotonous practices, it is a part of living and Cow has always been an integral part of our culture. So betraying cow means losing your self-identity.
Fighting for the cow in a sense you are fighting for the liberation of your mind, you are creating a new Indian who is self-assured, who is self-confident about the faith that treats all living entities as one family.
Conclusion:
We seek comfort though technologies, although people have created comfortable situations there is a feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction.
It is important to understand that this world is controlled by varies modes of nature and unless we respect and understand how it works and create satvic way of living, there can be no prosperity.
Our relationship with cows is symbiotic.
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